E17: Hypnotherapy Changed My Life & Now I Use It to Change Other People's Lives too with Julie Bale

Julie spent her whole life dieting; constantly telling herself 'The Real Me Isn't Fat' then she discovered the power of the mind and hypnotherapy.

This is where her real growth story began and in this episode we explore how Julie has not only changed her own life with hypnotherapy but now changes other peoples lives too.
 
Who is Julie Bale?

I’m Julie, I’m a registered hypnotherapist and no.1 best-selling author. My book The Real Me Isn’t Fat on Monday went to the top of the hypnosis charts and took the crown from the king of hypno Paul McKenna.

I came into hypnotherapy through a career in opera and trained originally to help myself and other singers deal with stage fright, imposter syndrome, self-belief and the myriad of needs in the life of a performer.

Through this I discovered how hypnotherapy can change lives and went on to change my own body with my hypnotic weight loss course (which is detailed in my book) losing 35lbs.

I’ve been featured on the BBC, written articles for Metro and been in Woman, Woman’s Weekly, Woman & Home, Chat and Classical Music Magazine.

I love Scotland (particularly Inverness where I have a home), I love single malt whisky (I believe life’s too short for cheap alcohol). I love singing. I love weight training, a decent royal iced fruit cake and of course coffee.

Julie's links:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/therealmehypnotherapy/

https://www.juliebale.com/book

https://www.instagram.com/juliebalemindtraining

http://linkedin.com/in/juliebale

Want to connect? Find me here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemmahine

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/behappybesuccessful

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-hine

Website: https://www.emmahine.co.uk

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmmaHineStrategy

Transcript

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Dream Business, Dream Life. Today I'm joined by Julie Bale. Julie is a registered hypnotherapist, best selling author, and wonderfully talented opera singer. She trained in hypnotherapy originally to help herself and other singers deal with stage fright, anxiety, Imposter syndrome and self belief through this.

She has discovered how hypnotherapy can change lives. And she went on to develop a hypnotic weight loss course, which enabled her to lose 35 pounds. And this same course has helped many of her clients lose weight too. She is amazing lady, and I'm delighted to be having a chat with her today. Hello, Julie.

Great to have you here. Hello. Hello. Okay. Julie, we dive straight into this. Take us back a little bit and tell us about Julie pre hypnotherapy.  

Yeah, thank you. Well, what I'd like to do is to just tell you a little story really. So I want you to imagine me  and it's a Saturday night  and I'm going out to an event.

And I have not really thought about what I'm going to wear to this event, but it's quite an important event because I've been busy doing all the things as we do, busy sorting everybody else out, sorting childcare out, sorting, sorting my husband out, sorting the house out. And I haven't really thought about what I'm going to wear. 

So I go to my wardrobe. And I pick out what I think might be something for me to wear and I put it on or rather I try to put it on  and it doesn't fit. I can't get, can't get the zip up.  So then I start to feel a little bit panicky,  but I've got other options. So I pick something else out, something that I don't like as much, but I put that on  and again, it doesn't fit. 

And now I'm starting to get really worried. Because I'm thinking what on earth am I going to wear? And so I'm trying things and you can imagine the pile on the bed is going all, all, all the trying things on. And every time I look in the mirror, I  really, really hate what I see outside that if I can get it on, I look awful in it.

Most things I can't get on, things that I was certain that I couldn't. I wasn't even thinking how on earth can I not fit into this anymore? Eventually I just sit down on the bed. And cry  and think I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go to this event.  Now, that's a true story about me, but it's not just once it happened.

It happened, time and time and time again, and it's a story about me.  But I've heard that story from so many other women as well, whether it's going through the wardrobe  or in the shock changing rooms where it's even more horrible. And that hopelessness that you feel and that despair that is then tied in.

wrongly to your self worth. So suddenly you feel like you're worth nothing because nothing in your wardrobe fits you and it all becomes linked together to value and  you feel like you have no worth anymore. And that's the position that I Have been in at many different points in my life. And often I talk about dieting and how I started dieting as a child and how those messages that I was given about my body not being good enough, and the messages that I heard from other people about you should be this and you should be that and not fitting in at all, literally fitting in to clothes, but not fitting into this image of how I should.

Look,  what was just drove me to spending a life of self loathing when I looked in the mirror, I  did not see the person who I thought I was in my head.  And so that's really Where everything started, my journey with hypnotherapy, uh, did come out of a need to  feel safe on stage again, a need to not be feeling terror when I was on stage again, but always there at the bottom of everything, no matter what I achieved in life,  was this, uh, but. 

You can't control your weight, can you? You can't control how you look, can you? And that's not good enough.  And so then  when I discovered hypnotherapy, then when I had this light bulb moment of all the things, you know, can I use hypnotherapy to help me lose weight? And it worked.  Then there's my mission because I know how horrible it feels.

To have your worth linked to how you look and not being able to do anything about it.  But then having lost lots of weight, I realized that actually it's not about the weight at all. It's not about how you look. It's about how you feel about how you look. And that's where the hypnotherapy really came in because they're using those tools.

I was able to then just replace.  The negative thoughts that I had, the horrible thoughts that I had first of all, become aware of them and then replace them with better thoughts and make those the habitual thoughts. And so eventually  when I looked in the mirror, I mean, not always we all, I think we all, we all have, and I say women, but actually I work with men as well, who do really, really well with, with the courses and have exactly the same insecurities as we do.

But, you know, now. You can start to rebuild that self worth, that self esteem, that confidence  in how you look and, and not have it linked to  the numbers on the scales. 

Yeah. And I think, I think how we feel about ourselves in terms of whether that's how we look, um, you know, whether it's the color of her hair, me and my gray hair, you know, my obsession with that.

That's why I've gone blonde to try and disguise the gray a little bit. We, we, we, we see ourselves so negatively, don't we? But that has such a huge impact, not just on how we show up. On the places that we allow ourselves to show up, things that we allow ourselves to do, the things that we, you know, the, the things that we do within our business are massively impacted by how we feel about ourselves in our body.

So I think it's amazing that you have found something that yes, ultimately will help people to lose weight, but it's so much more than that, isn't it? You know, and it isn't just about weight loss, is it? To some people, it won't be about the weight loss. It will be about, as you say, Accepting who they are and what they've got.

And I absolutely love that. And I feel that completely because I absolutely have been that person. And, you know, I've been that person when I've been terribly painfully skinny and I've been that person when I've, I've been overweight, you know, how you look and feel has a massive impact on, on how you show up and ultimately, I think if you feel better, you grow your business better, you know, as a business owner, I think it's amazing. 

So I love that. I love that. What made you, um, step into hypnotherapy? How, how did hypnotherapy jump out and say, here's something, was it, was it brand new to you? Is it something you'd sort of come across before?  Well, 

I'd, um, I'd always been curious as I think so many of us are and didn't really know very much about it at all, but it's quite, I mean, we all, we all love a bit of magic, don't we?

And unfortunately, hypnotherapy, um, does, does still and can still be regarded as a magical thing. And I, I am very, very much, um, part of the movement to move the perception of hypnotherapy away. from magical thinking, but for sure, that is how I, I came into it in the first place being curious about it. And I had been a smoker as a student, which is a crazy thing for a singer.

Well, crazy thing for any person. To do  to be fair, but as a singer, you know, even worse because, because the breathing mechanism is so important, particularly in the style of singing that, that I like to do, which is classical singing opera singing. And, um, and so I, I wanted to give up smoking and this was in 1997 and I went and I had three sessions with a hypnotherapist and I gave up smoking and I never smoked another cigarette.

Never. I have never smoked since. It worked brilliantly. But it, but I didn't equate it to anything else. It was just, at that point, a tool for giving up smoking. And I gave up smoking for hypnotherapy, and that was that. Until I, uh, had an audition at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. And I had never had any fear with singing, performing, anything like that before, but this particular time, and of course it was a, it was a big thing, um, the biggest thing.

And I went and I sat in the waiting room at the stage door of the Royal Opera House and suddenly realized I was terrified, absolutely terrified, petrified is a better word. You know, you turn to stone. petrified. I couldn't speak to the people who were either side of me, which is not like me, as you know, Emma.

It's not like, not like me not to talk to people, but I couldn't. And, uh, I felt sick and, um, my thoughts were just crazy and my palms were sweaty and I couldn't breathe. All of this stuff. And I did, I did my audition completely on autopilot. If you asked me how it went, I can't really tell you. They said some lovely things to me, but I knew it wasn't representative of me.

And I knew that I had to get rid of that. And I, and so I started searching for different ways and I went through all different kinds of things and found hypnotherapy and found that some tools, there was some. Particular tools that we use in hypnotherapy around changing thoughts, changing, changing habits, changing thoughts, changing messages, replacing them that worked brilliantly for me.

So I was able to be my, um, what I always say is I want to be free and fearless.  That's that's sort of my persona on the stage, and I was able to do that again, and I started working with other singers and I worked with singers at all stages of singing people singing in call societies who just didn't want the nerves when they stood up to sing to.

I had a client who. Got to the finals of the biggest singing competition in the world to the finals overcoming crippling stage fright to do that. So it was all working brilliantly. But as I said, always always always is this this thing about, about the weight looking in the mirror. And that's where you know my, my book that you kindly mentioned at the beginning,  which is entitled the real me isn't fat.

It's the real me. Because that is what I used to say to myself when I looked in the mirror,  I would look in the mirror, catch myself in the mirror and go, that's not the real me. The real me isn't fat. And that's where that, that came from. And so there was this thought, I wonder if.  Hypnotherapy could be used to help me to lose weight because just as you said about business for so many of those of us who've been on a diet all our lives, it really does keep you stuck when I've lost the weight.

Then I will, you know, when I've changed these things about me that I don't like when I'm happy, when I've lost that stone, you know, then I will. And that is exactly what I have found from the people who I've worked with on this program. Yes, they've all lost weight. That's the first thing, but it's not the only thing because once they've lost the weight, then they realize that they need to deal with these messages that are there, the self critical voice.

That's been going on all the time that's led to this in many ways. But once they've lost the weight, that's not the end. Once they've lost the weight, then we need to deal with those ugly messages that we have taken on board and used as sticks to beat ourselves with all our lives.  And then once that is sorted out, which again, hypnotherapy works so brilliantly for once that is done, then what is the real me?

Who is the real me? What can I do now that I can put down that burden of being obsessed with food, being obsessed with looking in the mirror, being obsessed with not liking photographs of myself? So that.  There's suddenly all this free time that you can use to invest in your business.  

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the thing, isn't it?

When, when people want to lose weight, it's not necessarily because They want to lose weight as in they want the scales to give them a smaller number. And that's a Brucey bonus, isn't it? It's the thing they want to do when they've lost the weight because they don't feel that they can do it. And sometimes people can't do it.

You know, that's, that's a fact of life, isn't it? Sometimes our weight can stop us doing some of the things that we want to do. Um, but ultimately it's the thing we want to do once we've lost weight. Loss the weight that is our driver, isn't it? And so is that the thing that you would say is that the reason people come to you is the thing they want to do rather than the weight loss? 

No, because I think when people, because we become so obsessed and we have become a weight driven, obsessed society, unfortunately, you know, with everything that goes on in the media and so on.  People come because they can't see past that.  You know, they really, they really can't see past that, but what they realize then once they start, once they realize that they can lose weight and you know, my program is really, really simple.

It's about retraining your thoughts so that you have a better relationship with food so that you don't feel out of control around food. So many of us have been trained to do by the diet. Industry by dieting. We've been trained to fear the buffet table, you know? Oh, no, I can't go. There's going to be a buffet.

I'll have to eat everything there. We've been trying to fear it. And so we empower ourselves to do that. And then what that leads to is realizing, well, if I can do that.  Then what else can I do? I can do so many other things by just simply learning how to control my mind, how to train my mind to do the things that I want in life, rather than allowing it to be trained to be afraid to do things.

Yeah, yeah, which makes sense, which makes complete sense and, and, and I'm happy to share my, my little story here for, um, I've done Julie's four week course. Um, um, like an, it's like an introductory course, isn't it? Your four week course. So it takes you through, um, you know, the basics, I suppose, the foundations of, of, of what you need to do in order to start your, your journey in terms of weight loss. 

And I think it's fair to say I was one of the sceptical ones, wasn't I, that came along. I wasn't sure. I didn't understand it. And I think that's the right word to use it. What I believed it worked because I had seen Julie's results. I had seen a client's results. I'd seen her results. I, you know, I'd seen all of that stuff.

So I absolutely believed it worked, but I didn't understand how it works. So I was sceptical. I suppose I was one of those that was in this. I remember the turn me into a chicken moment, and I know I said that to you at the beginning, Julie, and you did laugh at me. You did. And that's fine. That is absolutely fine.

So I was skeptical.  And at the beginning, I think it took me a little while to, to, to allow myself, and I think that's the right word to use, allow myself to go with the process and to allow myself to stop myself from stopping  myself, allowing it to work. Does that make sense? I think it does. Um, so what I mean by that is I was struggling initially with the,  um, allowing my mind to control my body a little bit.

I was stopping myself and I'm one of these people that's, that struggles to do meditation. I struggle to switch off, uh, which probably explains why, you know, I found that difficult.  But during that four weeks, I did all of the things that, you know, Julie says to do. I followed all of the instructions. I did all of the, the hypnotherapy  exercises and everything that Julie put in there.

And somehow I lost five pounds. So jury, and I, I hadn't lost weight for, you know, the last. 12, 15 months, you know, people know my story, know my journey. All I have done is gain weight during this time. There's, there's been nothing. And I didn't intentionally do anything different. I did not say, right, I'm doing this four week course.

I'm popping myself on a diet. I didn't. And I still ate cake. I still drank wine. I still went out. But during that period, I did all of the things I was supposed to do and I, I lost five pounds and I've sat back and looped and reflected a little bit. And clearly some of the things that, you know, I was, my mind was training my body a little bit more subconsciously.

I wasn't picking the same as I probably would have been before. And I just stopped that because I didn't feel the need to. So I'd, I'd somehow, somehow, this is the bit that I don't understand. And I know Julie can give you all of the science behind this. Um, you know.  I was just stopping myself subconsciously, unintentionally from doing the things I didn't need to do.

When I was full, I would stop eating. I wouldn't think, Oh, I've only got an extra slice of pizza, or I've only got, you know, an extra quarter of a sandwich. If I'm full, I just stopped eating and didn't even question it. It just happened. So, so this can work for people who  Or skeptical for people who don't understand the science behind it.

Julie absolutely can give you all of that science and can, can tell you exactly how it's working. Um, but I think for anybody that's skeptical, my advice is to, to give it a go. Absolutely to, to give it a go. Um, and Julie, I'm sure you can now share with us some of the science behind what I talk about.

Cause I know you're not allowing me to call it magic, um,  but it actually is magical. It's magical how it happens, but it's not magic. As in.  You know, magic for, uh, for entertainment purposes. So come on, give us a bit of the science behind this. 

Well, um, I dunno about sciences as such, but I think the most important thing for us to take away from this is that we have trained our minds through diet culture to  believe certain things.

And you said a couple of them there, Emma. One of it, one of them was, um, oh, there's just one slice of pizza left. You have taught as a child, as a baby, you know, you hear parents all the time saying, oh, I can't get my child to eat. I can't get my child to eat. And yet as adults say, well, there's only one slice left.

I better eat it. I don't want to waste food. I mustn't waste food. Wasting food is a sin and all of these kinds of things. And so we eat. The food we have trained ourselves to eat that food. And what we've done in the process is we've stopped listening to our bodies. So when our mind and body are completely connected, then the body will tell you. 

When it's full, when it's had enough, there are hunger signals and these are, I always say, you know, I didn't know hunger signals because I went on a, I went on my first diet as a child and I finished diet. When did I go on a diet? I went on a diet in 1977, and I finished in 2023. So I was under diet a long time, and I did not know what hunger levels.

Were I didn't understand them. Many of us, when it comes to overeating, what tends to happen is if we've been on a diet, we're either eating food that we don't like, but we're eating it because we're told, Oh, this will make you slim or this will stop you putting on weight, or this is good food and this is bad food and there's no such thing.

There's just food.  There's just energy density, of course, but there's just food. So what we need to do is we need to figure out  when we are full, not when we're, I only knew starving and stuffed. And I know I say this a lot, but I only knew when I was starving, which is when I was under eating because I was on a diet and I wasn't eating so I could lose weight or stuff, which was normally like the week before I was going to go onto a diet.

So I was eating everything I could because in a week I'm going to be on a diet, but I didn't know what full was. And I know that, I mean, particularly for you, Emma, because you've said before the mind less. Eating, which is something else that we learned. So we're either eating food that we don't really want to eat.

Don't do that. Eat food that you like, eat the food that you like, eat it, savor it, be present, eat it mindfully, and then  there you are. Suddenly you'll go, Oh, I've had enough now.  But also the, uh, the snacking, the eating while you are not thinking about eating is, it's something that we have learned.  We have learned to sit down in front of the TV with a packet of Jaffa cakes.

I don't know if Jaffa cakes are your thing. They're not mine.  Okay.  And we're going to have one and suddenly the packets empty.  Be mindful around food, you know, eat the food that you like, be mindful around it. And so that's, The first process of how it works, learning how to eat, then learning what  to eat, and then the big process of understanding why we overeat, and that's all the, those are all the messages bits. 

You know, all the all the messages that we've been given about not wasting food, um, about about just eat this little bit and on all the bargaining that we've had. And, um, and this is. Why lots of people end up hating lots of different foods because they've been forced to eat things that their body doesn't want.

Not just that they don't like, but that their body doesn't want, you know, and, and then they get a bad relationship around, around food. So, um, so that's sort of how, how it works, but really is a case of. With this work, we start hypnotherapy is brilliant about connecting the mind and the body again, because we become hyper aware  of what is happening in our body, while we are making suggestions in our mind.

And so that.  It's in itself is perfect for helping with people with weight loss, because when we become that hyper aware of what we're eating, then we can start to reconnect  with our natural hunger levels. I don't know if that answers exactly what you asked me, but, um, 

Absolutely does. Absolutely does.

Okay. So I want to ask you one more question before we go into my usual closed down questions. Okay. How would you say your life has changed since you have brought  hypnotherapy into your world?  

So I would say, Emma, your word is growth. And I would say that that is what has happened for me. Since I have discovered  Hypnotherapy, since I've started bringing these tools into my life and helping other people with them as well.

I have done so many things that I would never have dared do before. That I never would have dreamt.  that I could do before, and I would not have put myself forward  for them as well. So what has happened for me is that my, certainly my self esteem has gone, has gone through the roof and I'm able to say yes to so many more things that normally I would have said no.

No, two.  

And you have in this last, um,  probably only six months. Is it really this last sort of six months you have said yes to some and absolutely amazing things. Do you want to share some of those with us?  Uh, 

well, um, I've. I've had lots and lots of PR stuff. So I've written, uh, I've written a couple of articles for the Metro.

I mean, I never had any, any designs to be a writer, but here we are. Um, I stood on stage at Impact Live and I spoke in front of 150 people about my book, The Real Me Isn't Fat. Um, I, I wrote a book. And I published a book, , and it became a, an Amazon number one best seller, which, and this book has got my four week course.

The four week course that Emma, um, did is outlined in there along with a, a, a little audio guide that which has, you know, my, my voice in your ears if you want that, or if you don't like my voice in your ears, you can just read it or record it yourself. Um, so there's, there's that. Have I missed anything out?

Is there 

anything else?  grown a business. I mean, it's a tiny little thing you've done in between, you know.  

Yeah. You've got an 

amazing business, which is growing arms and legs day by day. Um, you know, so I, so I think, you know, that is a lot of stuff in a short space of time, isn't it? And I'm an amazing so much stuff that you have done.

Okay. So at the end of every episode, I asked my guests to share with us top tip so that our listeners can, um, can utilize that for their own growth. So Julie, what's your top tip? 

Well, my top tip has to be, um,  this phrase, which is you are not your thoughts.  And what I mean by that is that these thoughts that we can often use every day, because it's, it's not normally the event that causes us stress or causes us worry or that it's the thought that we have about. 

It's about how we look in the mirror, about how we look in the, in photographs and so on. So, but you are not your thoughts. These thoughts can be changed. They can be edited. They can be replaced. And in some cases they can be deleted. And the other little thing as well that I want, I knew you said a top tip, but I've got to, my second one is, is for you to just ponder on the fact that losing weight.

Isn't about.  losing weight  and you all can do it.  

Fantastic. I love that. You are not your thoughts. I absolutely love that. Thank you very much, Julie. So finally, if any other listeners want to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to connect with you?  

So my, um, I'm, I'm, I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram.

I'm on LinkedIn.  Um, I have a new Facebook group called Unlocking the Real You, which is all about how you can improve your life with hypnotherapy, all the different ways. Definitely, uh, we're dealing with weight loss there, but there's also dealing with stress and anxiety and sleep issues and all the things there.

So that's called Unlocking the Real You. book is called the real meat isn't fat, which is available on Amazon and my website, which is very easy, juliebale. com.  Love that. 

Thank you so much for joining me today. It has been amazing chatting with you, Julie, and thank you to everybody else for listening. We will see you next time.